The official blog for Bitcrack Cyber Security.
Dedicated to security-related matters such as Hacking, Passwords, Governance, Threat Intelligence and more.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Keeping Your Cyber Security Posture in Check

As cybercrime becomes more and more sophisticated and wide
spread with technology, demand for cyber security services are ever increasing.
With this, thousands of cyber security companies have emerged offering all
sorts of services using powerful words and brilliant marketing schemes. This
can be really confusing to many businesses who want fortify their cyber
infrastructure.

All you need to know and fix your cyber security posture in
the most basic way are two critical assessments, namely vulnerability
assessments and penetration tests.

Vulnerability Assessments

This is a technique of discovering IT security
vulnerabilities that hackers use to harm your business.

The goal of a vulnerability assessment is to identify
vulnerabilities, quantify their impacts should they be exploited by malicious
hackers, chart a risk matrix with classifications based on impact and business
value, and mitigating them to reduce the business risk exposure.

Penetration tests

This is a simulation of an intrusion on your business IT
network as a hacker would.

The goal of a penetration test is to identify how a hacker
would hack into your business and what kind of harm the attacker can do, for
example, reach into your customer database which can cause massive damage to
your business and reputation. Not to mention compliance issues in your country.
The second goal is to put your security systems through a test of their
effectiveness and efficiency.

What should your business start with?

If your IT team has never put focus on security, it is
crucial to take on a vulnerability assessment first. This will map out your
business’s critical assets to a security risk matrix and determine the current
status of your IT infrastructure.

Penetration tests are more effective after a vulnerability
assessment. This is because you can not only test your infrastructure but also
test all the security measures you have put into place to reduce your risk
which you discovered from the vulnerability assessment findings.

Going the next step…

By now, with regular vulnerability assessments and periodic
penetration tests, your defenses are quite strong. And you will have a cyber
security team in place to maintain the security measures and overall security
posture of your business network infrastructure.

Occasionally, it is very beneficial for both your cyber
security team and the support staff of your network infrastructure to run a red
team-blue team simulation. A red
team-blue team is an offensive-defensive simulation. The blue team comprises of
your internal cyber security team, and the red team comprises of an external
cyber security team.

The simulation can be run as a planned event or an unplanned
event. The latter is always advised as it will test how effective your internal
cyber security team are at identifying intrusions and mitigating them from
doing more damage.

This will give the business the most practical view as to
how much the it can withstand against a fully-fledged cyber-attack.